Originally Posted by
mr_bill
That's a sidewalk, not a sidepath. Florida has minimum requirements for bicycle paths - that doesn't meet them, not even close.
(At least the sidewalk is not in the door zone.)
-mr. bill
I'll take the correction as being technically correct in a legal sense--but that is not what I would consider anything remotely like a typical sidewalk in any part of the country I've lived in. It's generally not the case that there would be a sidewalk through a length of land that vacant without it being designated as a path of one kind or another. I really think there's a reason most of these types of arguments come from people in Florida.
As a practical matter from the perspective of a person who has never ridden there and is just looking at the statute, the main difference between sidewalk riding and path riding in Florida is that the path riding requires lane adherence, and infractions on the path are chargeable as vehicle violations and on the sidewalk as pedestrian violations.
It might be interesting to know if there's a larger number of pedestrian vs. cyclist lawsuits per capita in Florida than in other states.